Signum
by Simoun Sibylla
Summary: "First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do."  Contains spoilers for Signum in A's, StrikerS, and Force. WILL BE CONTINUED, PENDING DEVELOPMENTS IN THE MANGA.


"_First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do."_

_- Epictetus_

**Signum**

She was a knight.

That was the first thought that rose in her mind when she awoke. She knew at the core of her being who she was, why she was here, and what she must do.

She opened her eyes. She was Signum, the Knight of the Sword.

She had no memory of what she had been before; perhaps she had never been anything else. She remembered nothing of her youth; perhaps she had never been a child. She knew neither family nor friends; perhaps she had always been alone.

But no—she was not the only one here. She sensed more than saw the others take shape, rising out of the magic circle glowing beneath her feet. The forms of her companions solidified, and she knew them instinctively by name: Vita, Shamal, Zafira.

She had no recollection of how they had first met; perhaps they had never been apart. She knew not where they had come from; perhaps they had never been anywhere else. She did not where they would be going now, yet she knew that she would lead them.

As the light of their summoning faded, Signum felt her pulse increase as her auxiliary memory functions booted up. Fragmentary images of her past incarnations flashed through her mind. There were many lifetimes behind her; she could not count them all.

But in each life all she was certain of one thing: she existed only to fill the pages of the magical tome that gave her life. She was bound to follow the Book through space and time, and to aid the master the Book chose. She would do whatever was required of her. She was Signum, the General of the Raging Flame and a Guardian Knight of the Book of Darkness. She knew her place in the universe—it was on the battlefield, above the smoldering embers of dying nations and beneath the starless sky of the eternal night her master would summon.

Signum's gaze fell upon the trembling mortal who would be the Book's new master. It was a brown-haired girl with wide, frightened eyes. She cowered on a bed, clearly in shock.

Signum dropped to one knee and bowed her head. "Master," she said, speaking for the group. "We come to serve."

xxxxx

At Signum's feet lay a dead man. She had killed him.

He had been a knight—a rare man in this day and age. In another time, another place, they might have been colleagues, comrades, lovers even. But here, in this life, she had no choice but to defeat him.

It was what he had wanted.

Their eyes had met briefly as his blade arced through the air towards her. Zest had recognized her for who she was and turned to her—weapon in hand—to escape his fate as an imperfect clone of his former self. He did not want to die slowly; he wanted to die now. She had seen it in his eyes.

The attack that had been aimed for her head sliced past her, not even grazing her skin; instead, it had merely cut through the ribbon holding up her ponytail and sent Signum's long, pink hair cascading down around her shoulders. She remembered how Zest had smiled ever so slightly at the sight.

But she was a knight. And so she had granted a fellow knight's last wish for a swift and honorable end.

With practiced ease, Signum gathered her long hair back up into a ponytail and tied the ribbon tightly around it. It was time to move on. She was a mage of the TSAB, and duty called. Her beloved master waited for her on the battlefield.

"I will head to the sky," announced Signum as she turned back to look at the small, red-headed figure clinging to Zest's dead body on the floor—it was Agito, the Belkan Unison Device Zest had used. The tiny woman had just lost her own dear master at Signum's hand.

Looking at the device, Signum saw that Agito resembled Master Hayate's device, Rein, on some basic level, but there was something strikingly different about her. Rein, true to her role as the guardian of the Book of the Azure Sky, seemed to radiate the energy of the sun; this other device, crouched over a corpse and shaking with anger and grief, smoldered with deeper, darker emotions. Where Rein's elements were air and light, Agito's were smoke and fire.

She somehow reminded Signum of Reinforce, the spirit of the Book of the Night Sky.

Signum had served the Book faithfully through eons of pain and suffering, but neither Signum nor that Book, that ancient Unison Device that would one day be known as Reinforce, had been given a choice about their future until they met Master Hayate. Only Master Hayate had granted Signum freedom and an existence separate from the Book. The price had been Reinforce's life and Signum's immortality. But Signum was a knight—she feared no death but a dishonorable one.

"Agito," she asked, "what will you do?"

The red-headed device rose to her feet. "You killed him!" she cried, glaring at Signum with tears in her eyes. "But you gave him his last moment of honor as a knight," she admitted. "He entrusted me to you."

Before Signum could respond, the tiny device darted up through the air to hover at Signum's eye level. Agito boldly stared down the knight who was several times her size. "So, I will go with you! I will stay with you and watch you. And if by chance you betray his words—!" The threat hung in the air between them.

Signum gazed levelly back at Agito. "If that time comes, you shall kill me with your flame," she said calmly. She had no doubt that Agito would gladly do so, should Signum stray from her path as Zest had. But Signum knew she would never lose her way again. She was a knight of ancient Belka, a mage of the TSAB, and a servant of Master Hayate. She had overcome too much sorrow, too much pain to betray herself again. She knew this life would be her last, and she would not waste it.

She raised a hand in invitation. She would gladly accept Agito's challenge.

Eyes flaring, Agito summoned an aura of flame around herself. Then she slapped her tiny hand down against Signum's outstretched fingertips and sent the magic blaze rushing down Signum's arm until it enveloped her entire body. The fire magic was hot, but it did not burn. It stung, like a thousand light pinpricks, but it was nothing Signum could not withstand. She knew the rush of fire was a test, and so she refused to even blink in response.

Agito's eyes narrowed, but then she shouted, "Unison in!" The fire coursing over Signum's skin suddenly leapt into her breast, filling her heart with a warmth she had never known before. Perhaps it was their shared affinity for fire elemental magic, perhaps it was their common Belkan heritage, but for whatever reason, Signum felt a sense of power and completeness she had never dreamed of.

She was whole.

Awed, she raised a hand to her chest and saw that the color of her armor had changed to a dark purple. She turned to see her reflection in the window and realized her hair was orange.

And on her back, there roared wings of fire.

"Agito."

"Yeah."

"Let's go."

The sky awaited.

xxxxx

Signum was a TSAB mage. She had sworn to protect the weak and to hunt down those who disturbed the peace.

The blonde woman floating in the air before her was a criminal—a murderer of the vilest kind who blithely acknowledged that she had massacred innocent civilians.

Signum hated this criminal, this swordswoman with flowing hair and a patch over her eye. She hated her because she and her kin bore powers that threatened to upset the entire civilization Signum had come to know and love in this lifetime. Just the sight of her made Signum's—and Agito's—blood boil. In Unison, their emotions mingled together. The General of the Raging Flame's anger and Agito's wild temper roared through their shared body like fire in a forge, and only Signum's cool discipline could temper its power. In her hand, the great sword, Laevantein, picked up on the power surging through his master and crackled with magic of searing lightning and flame.

Signum had seen too many worlds rise and fall; she knew all to well the carnage that lay ahead if the TSAB did not eradicate this new threat. This woman—this carrier of the EC disease that drove people to kill and made them nearly invincible against magic—reminded Signum too much of what she had once been, when she was but a violent program serving the Book of Darkness.

She did not look down to the forest below, but she knew the boy was still down there. He, too, was infected, although he was but a child. There were other children with him. Both of the infected individuals had to be secured, and the innocent bystanders had to be protected—at all costs.

"Agito, release our Unison and take care of the children below."

"Understood! I'll set a delay spell just in case."

"Have a flame bullet in your right hand and a capture ring in your right."

"Acknowledged!"

Signum took a deep breath, then she shouted, "Unison out!"

The release of the Unison state with Agito rippled over her, rearranging Signum's body on a molecular level as Agito rematerialized outside Signum's body. A feeling of cold emptiness came over Signum, and her vision blurred briefly into darkness. She felt the roaring wings of fire vanish from her back.

A moment later, she was herself again.

Immediately, Signum launched a barrage of fireballs at the enemy while Agito dove down toward the treetops. Signum knew her magic would have no effect on the woman before her, but as the fire rained down around her opponent, Signum launched herself forward with Laevantein at the ready. The sword was damaged, but the blade held together out of sheer stubbornness; Signum knew the legendary weapon would not fail its master now, in this time of great need.

With a cry, she brought down her sword down on the one-eyed woman.

But the enemy smirked and blocked Laevantein with just her forearm, not even deigning to use her own sword to fend off such a futile attack.

Laevantein's blade shattered almost all the way down to the hilt.

"What a shame," smirked the other swordswoman.

With horror, Signum realized that the anti-magic properties extended all the way to the body of the infected individual—not just their weapons. Quickly she pulled back what was left of Laevantein. As long as the core of the device was unharmed, it would still be able to enhance Signum's own magic.

"Have you understood and despaired?" sneered the woman, licking her lips with bloodlust. Signum's heart pounded once, twice, in recognition, for she had borne that same expression herself, for millennia.

But before Signum's heart could beat again, the Divider sword sliced through her shields, her armor, her skin, her flesh and bone.

Signum knew this pain, too, from a thousand incarnations past. How many times had she been wounded, how many times had she been killed, only to be resurrected again by her master and the Book of Darkness? She had laughed in the face of the mortals who tried to defeat her in battle, because in the end, Signum would always come back and destroy them.

But now someone else was laughing as Signum reeled backward from the blow, gushing blood.

The sky lurched wildly, and then suddenly all went dark. She could feel herself falling, falling ever faster towards the ground, but she could not summon enough magic to slow her descent or cushion her landing. She could not even open her mouth to cry out a warning to Agito; she could not call out telepathically to Shamal, or to Vita, or to Testarossa, or even to Master Hayate.

She was helpless.

She who had faced a million enemies and vanquished them all, she who had seen hell and left it of her own accord, she who had feared neither pain nor death—she was helpless. It hurt more than anything else she had known.

But as she crashed toward the unwelcoming ground, she tightened her grip on Laevantein's hilt. Her body was as broken as her sword, but neither she nor her weapon would admit defeat.

She was a knight; she would never surrender.

xxxxx


End file.
